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In response to the current crisis in liberal catholic Anglicanism, this thesis explores and affirms the continuing value and transformational potential of contemporary sacramental ministry exercised by priests in this tradition. Through the lens of vivid, ‘electric moment’ stories - moments in priestly ministry when the presence of God was understood by one or both of the participants to be palpable - seven priests reflect in research interviews on their practice and in dialogue with the researcher articulate what they think they are doing in ministry. Without the trappings of the organisational church, the ministry of these priests is held up for scrutiny and evaluated as a transformative practice. A thematic analysis of the interview material follows which demonstrates that the ministry of these priests conforms to, and is rooted in, the traditional pattern of sacramental ministry, but in a modern way. I call this ‘sacramental improvisation’, a form of ministry that can make God’s action in the world intelligible to unchurched people today. According to my argument, this would depend upon the willingness of priests to be less reticent about speaking of God and then finding ways to do so that both retain the mystery, and at the same time make religious faith more accessible. The research process introduced priests to a reflexive way of thinking: a way to think outwards from experience, with freedom to think new thoughts. This was a creative process for priests and, in itself, transformational - it modelled a process of giving close attention, interpreting and working through. The thesis concludes that these methods could inspire new forms of support for clergy and theological education in the future and be especially beneficial to liberal catholic Anglican priests.

Thesis advisor: Jane E. Regan / Employing a Christian practice approach to pastoral theology (one that is interdisciplinary in its scope), this dissertation argues that Augustine's mystagogical theology and catechesis provides the basis for a contemporary liturgical formation that transforms human experience into liturgical existence through the practice of worshipful wisdom. Chapter one considers the formative nature of liturgical worship. Both liturgical theologians and catechists view liturgical prayer as a privileged source for liturgical formation. That is, the liturgy mediates an experience and lived knowledge of the Christian message through its performance, one that forms the Christian in a way of life. The first chapter concludes by acknowledging recent scholarship in liturgical studies that has been critical of this approach to formation through liturgical prayer. Fruitful participation in this prayer, one that contributes to a way of life characterized by a life infused with liturgical meaning, requires the appropriation of specific theological and spiritual dispositions that are essential to any act of Christian worship. Yet, what are the theological and spiritual dispositions required for fruitful liturgical worship? Chapter two does not answer this question directly but rather offers a heuristic through the ritual models of Clifford Geertz, Victor Turner, and Catherine Bell. This chapter suggests that for ritual prayer to function fruitfully, one must acquire specific dispositions, ways of knowing and practicing, necessary for any act of worship within a religion. In addition, ritual prayer presumes a specific telos, an end toward which the human person is directed and formed through ritual engagement. Finally, ritual prayer is formative when it leads to the acquisition of a certain habitus, a way of acting in which the ritual agent becomes capable of "ritualizing" in other areas of life. While these disciplines cannot provide a Christian specificity to liturgical worship, they can suggest the foundational questions that will guide liturgical theologians and catechists as they consider the theological and spiritual dispositions necessary for Christian liturgical prayer. Chapters three, four, and five, serve as an interruption to the more common approaches to liturgical theology and catechesis analyzed in the first chapter. In chapter three, I consider the mystagogical theology of Augustine of Hippo. For Augustine, Christian worship is intrinsic to the process of salvation in Christ, a renewal of human perception in which the signs of the created world are to be used to enjoy the reality of God. This renewal of human perception takes place through entrance into the school of Christ--the Church's reading of the Scriptures and its sacramental celebrations. To participate fruitfully in liturgical worship, thus requires the capacity to use the signs of the Scriptures and the liturgical rites to enjoy God through deeper understanding of the texts and practice under examination. This is what I will call practicing worshipful wisdom. In chapter four, I contemplate what the Christian becomes through this fruitful worship, particularly in the Eucharistic celebration. Through the Eucharistic pedagogy of faith, the Christian becomes a sacrifice of love offered to God. In this transformation of human identity, the renewal of the Christian made in the image and likeness of God, the Christian's memory, understanding and will grow into a site for divine sacrifice. Thus, the interior life of divine contemplation is more perfectly expressed in one's visible actions. The Christian, within the life of the Church, becomes a living Eucharistic sign. Finally in chapter five, I conclude with an analysis of Augustine's mystagogical pedagogy. I argue that Augustine's sermons are rhetorical performances, using the signs of Scripture, to form the imaginations of Christians, their way of thinking about God, and to lead the congregation to become what they received in the preaching event. One learns about the liturgical act in the context of the Christian narrative, as a cultivation of memory; thinks about the practice through a theological seeking that is oriented toward both conversion and prayer, cultivating understanding; and then performs the practice anew through the results of these exercises, cultivating love. In chapter six, this Augustinian mystagogical approach is interrupted by the contemporary context of the Catholic parish. This interruption first includes a diagnosis of the primary malaise effecting religious practice in the United States--secularization. American secularization consists of an attenuation of the religious imagination, a discomfort with theological thinking, and an emphasis upon individual flourishing. Then, this chapter turns to contemporary educational theory, including John Dewey and Etienne Wenger, as a way of discerning how to perform this Augustinian mystagogical approach in a secular age through the catechetical ministry of the parish. I conclude that an Augustinian mystagogical approach in the present context requires a de-habituation from previous ways of thinking, as well as an intelligent socialization into a mystagogical imagination within communities of practice. Finally, in chapter seven, I set forth a plan of formation in which the whole catechetical life of a parish becomes an initiation into the practice of worshipful wisdom through the four fundamental tasks of catechesis and an Augustinian mystagogical approach to catechetical pedagogy. By means of this Augustinian mystagogical formation, the Christian learns to offer all of one's existence as a sacrifice to God, the Eucharistic vocation of the Christian. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2011. / Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Theology.

Thesis advisor: Oliva Blanchette / This dissertation is a synthetic exercise in philosophy and theology, proceeding from the perennial question: "What is the specific difference between sacrament and superstition?" It answers that the difference lies in the order of revelation. Sacraments are a form of revealed praxis, and only the divine guaranty of revelation distinguishes them from other forms of human action, including superstitious action. Revelation takes shape in historical sensible signs demanding human interpretation, such as inspired scripture. These revealed signs also include precise human actions, however, in the form of the prescriptions of sacramental praxis. As the words of Scripture do not signify merely human intentions, but express the divine will, so sacramental action signifies a divine intention, not a purely human intention, in the form of this precise praxis. Sacraments, therefore, far from attempting some kind of natural purchase on the supernatural, in fact demand the opposite: the surrender of the human to the divine will, the admission of human insufficiency. This answer is based on a theological appropriation of Maurice Blondel's philosophical investigation of human action in his early philosophical work Action (1893), in which he rehabilitates the question of the supernatural on a properly philosophical footing by establishing a hypothetical necessity for a supernatural complement to human action. Blondel and Aquinas, therefore, both find the point of heterogenous insertion for the supernatural in human subjectivity: in the virtues for Aquinas, in voluntary human action for Blondel. The dialectic of Action (1893) hinges on the phenomenon of superstitious action, which functions as a middle term in the dialectic. Superstition for Blondel corresponds to an attempt at human `self-sufficiency': actively placing in a finite object of the will the transcendent perfection that can only be received passively as gift from outside the natural order, by insertion of a heterogenous factor in the human action. Given that human action is irreducible in Blondel's philosophy and even thought itself is a form of action, so superstition works its way into all forms of human practice, including intellectual pursuits like philosophy and theology, giving rise to `closed' and self-sufficient philosophical and theological systems. Moreover, Blondel audaciously turns Kant's accusation of superstition against sacraments around, arguing that it is the extreme rationalists, not the unlearned devout, who are guilty of the most insidious form of superstition by effectively fetishizing their own thought, finding there the completion that Blondel's dialectic demonstrates to be impossible in the natural order. Sacramental action, by contrast, since it requires submission of human to divine will and the admission of human insufficiency, it is at the very antipodes of superstition. The theological appropriation of Blondel's philosophy provides a heuristic in sacramental theology, since it entails that the supernatural efficacy of the sacraments cannot be attributed, even partially, to the natural efficacy of human action. It is hard to see how post-conciliar theories of `symbolic efficacy' avoid superstition, therefore, since they attempt to find in natural human action the heterogenous supernatural that cannot be reduced to the merely naturally perceptible. / Thesis (STD) — Boston College, 2015. / Submitted to: Boston College. School of Theology and Ministry. / Discipline: Sacred Theology.

This thesis investigates the use of drama as a teaching tool in religious education within the context of sacramental preparation. The research is informed by educational theories which suggest that arts education and religious education both rely on aesthetic knowing to construct meaning.The theories which underpin this research claim that this form of knowing honours the students’ freedom to form their own understandings and will be achieved through critical reflection and experiential methods which engage heart, spirit and mind. Drama is one such method and therefore this thesis contends that drama and religious education are indeed ‘a match made in heaven’.

Orientador: Andrea Lucia Dorini de Oliveira Carvalho Rossi / Resumo: A presente tese tem por intento compreender e questionar a existência, a atuação e o papel desempenhado pelo mito de Dioniso-Zagreu na tradição órfica da Grécia clássica, e na eventual dramatização desses mistérios. Seria este realmente o mito cardinal do orfismo ou ele é uma ficção intencionalmente provocada pelas leituras apologéticas dos estudiosos do século XIX? Integra-se a ele uma antropogonia inovadora ou não há evidências para tal construção teórica? A antiguidade, o conteúdo e a centralidade do mito têm sido motivo de amplo debate entre os estudiosos do tema. E esses debates, muitas vezes, se ajustam a imagens viciadas e induzidas das fontes, referências, métodos e materiais de investigação. Enquanto alguns intérpretes e comentadores inserem sua origem e, sobretudo, sua propagação, a partir V século AEC, outros, influenciados pelo cetiscimo e pelos apelos da hipercrítica, advogam pela inexistência tanto do mito, quanto da doutrina do pecado original que supostamente faria parte da composição desta narrativa. Munida de perspectivas e interpretações plurais, esta pesquisa visa a percorrer a história da tradição órfica, em busca de imagens que deem conta dessa multiplicidade intrínseca e característica do universo dionisíaco, a fim de analisar também as crenças peculiares às práticas de representação dramática e se elas estariam presentes no ritual órfico, em especial no período clássico, a partir da simbologia estabelecida à época pelos testemunhos, pela iconografia e ... (Resumo completo, clicar acesso eletrônico abaixo) / Abstract: This thesis aims to understand and question the existence, the performance and the role played by the myth of Dionysos-Zagreus in the Orphic tradition of classical Greece, and in the eventual dramatization of these mysteries. Is this really the cardinal myth of Orphism or is it a fiction intentionally provoked by the apologetic readings of nineteenth-century scholars? Is an innovative anthropogony integrated into it or is there no evidence for such a theoretical construction? The antiquity, content and centrality of the myth have been the subject of wide debate among scholars. These debates often fit in with misleading and induced images of sources, references, methods, and research materials. While some interpreters and commentators insert its origin and, above all, its propagation, from the 5th century BCE, others, influenced by the eighteenth century and the appeals of the hypercritic, advocate the inexistence of both, myth and the doctrine of original sin, that supposedly would be part of the composition of this narrative. Armed with perspectives and plural interpretations, this research aims to search the history of the Orphic tradition, looking for images that account for this intrinsic multiplicity and characteristic of the Dionysian universe, in order to analyze also the beliefs peculiar to the practices of dramatic representation and if they would be present in the Orphic ritual, especially in the classical period, from the symbology established at the time by the te... (Complete abstract click electronic access below) / Doutor

This thesis is the first book-length study of the three autos sacramentales by Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz. Sor Juana’s religious drama has received little attention, despite her status as one of the greatest figures of Mexican literature. She was also writing during a particularly significant period in Hispanic literary history: at the end of the Spanish Golden Age, and at the rise of a new class of intellectual élites in the New World, the criollos. I contend that Sor Juana’s autos sacramentales are crucial to understanding how she contributed to the formation of a criollo identity. In doing so, she engaged with the mentalities of two continents and two historical periods: Europe and the Americas, and the Baroque and the Enlightenment. To demonstrate this, I provide a study of each of Sor Juana’s sacramental plays, alongside the loa which was written to accompany them. My method combines close-text reading with a historical approach, and I pay particular attention to the theological function of the plays. In each chapter, I focus on the concurrent strands of thought in her works. I consider how the plays demonstrate the Catholic doctrine of transubstantiation, and how they engage with the aesthetic and theological mindset of the Spanish Baroque. I study how they incorporate indigenous Nahuatl theatrical traditions, and ask how they engage with the scientific developments of the Enlightenment. I conclude that in her autos sacramentales Sor Juana expresses a mindset that is both geographically and historically “between two worlds.” The influence of Nahuatl theatre on Sor Juana’s dramaturgy has never before been studied. The influence of Enlightenment thought on her works has been noted by a few scholars, but never considered in relation to her religious works. The demonstration of the interaction of Enlightenment and Catholic ideas challenges our notion of the Enlightenment as a secularising movement, and has potential implications for scholars of the period beyond the sphere of Sor Juana studies.

Thesis advisor: Boyd Coolman / This study considers the development of Augustine's early soteriology in the years leading up to and including his writing of Confessions. Central to that inquiry is a treatment of his increasing use of the term humilitas. Yet that inquiry necessitates a broader account of the fallen soul and its healing by the Incarnate Savior. The result is a mostly chronological survey that shows Augustine developing clearer connections between his soteriology, Christology, and sacramental theology. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2018. / Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Theology.